In electronic equipment such as a cellular phone, etc., there is known to be equipment provided with a main-body part having a numeric keypad and a microphone, etc., a sub-body part having a liquid crystal device and a speaker, etc., and a slide mechanism which causes the sub-body part to slide relative to the main-body part, wherein the sub-body part is caused to move relative to the main-body part by a slide operation instead of a hinge operation.
In this electronic equipment, by causing the sub-body part, which is coupled to the main-body part, to slide relative to the main-body part, the speaker is caused to be positioned at a user's ear and the microphone is caused to be positioned at a user's mouth or jaw, or the numeric keypad is caused to be exposed so as to be juxtaposed to a display.
There exists an example, which is disclosed in Patent Document 1, of a slide mechanism used for this kind of electronic equipment. The slide mechanism recited in Patent Document 1 is provided with a spring including a plurality of lines (pieces) of linear spring of which one end being rotatably connected to the sub-body part and the other end being rotatably connected to the sub-body part. According to the biasing force of this spring, the slide mechanism provides a reaction force to an operation of a user in the first half of the sliding and provides an assist force to the operation of the user in the second half of the sliding.